Former DC Bureau Chief: Clinton Buddy Pitched ‘Birther’ Story In 2008

Hillary Clinton surrogate Sid Blumenthal personally pitched a reporter on the President Obama “birther” story when she was campaigning for president in 2008, a former Washington reporter said Thursday.

The Clinton campaign and the media have consistently refuted Trump’s claim Clinton started the birther movement, which Trump re-upped Friday when he said for the first publicly that he believes Obama was born in the United States. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy,” Trump said, drawing a slew of media fact checks almost immediately. “I finished it.”

But former McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher has backed up Trump’s version of events, saying he was personally pitched the story by a Clinton surrogate in 2008.

Clinton had tweeted: “President Obama’s successor cannot and will not be the man who led the racist birther movement. Period.”

And Asher replied: “@HillaryClinton So why did your man #sidblumenthal spread the #obama birther rumor to me in 2008, asking us to investigate? Remember?”

Nevertheless, as soon as Trump reiterated his criticism Clinton started the birther movement, the media started churning out fact checks.

“I covered it at the time,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said Friday, referring to the movement. “She and her campaign never, never started the birther issue.”

“Trump Drops False ‘Birther’ Theory, but Floats a New One: Clinton Started It,” blared a New York Times headline. And The Washington Post fact checker quickly spun up a piece declaring the claim “debunked.”

At one point the MSNBC chyron read: “Trump (falsely) claims Clinton started birther controversy.”

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About the AuthorRusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss is a freelance journalist focusing on the conservative movement and its political agenda. He has been writing conservatively charged articles for several years in the upstate New York area, and his writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record. He is also Editor of one of the top conservative blogs of 2012, the Mental Recession.

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